Fifteen years ago, I was shattered with my hopes dashed when I was told I had five years to live after being diagnosed with stage 4 chronic kidney disease, media personality Abigail Ashley has recounted.
What, according to her, started as a normal headache deteriorated by the day until her nightmares unfolded.
“It started as a mere headache and I thought it was stress from work so I will talk to doctors and they will prescribe pain killers for me to subdue the pain. But at one night in 2007, I started coughing with blood in my sleep and went to tell my mum about it.
“I was rushed to a private hospital nearby only to wake up the next day with my entire body swollen. I was transferred to Korle-Bu where I was diagnosed with Stage 4 chronic disease and due to the severity, I was asked to go on dialysis but I declined,” she told Afia Amankwa Tamakloe on Adom TV’s M’ashyase3.
Following her refusal to go on dialysis after she witnessed the pain of patients already on it, a doctor, she noted, told her she was going to die in five years.
She lived each day in fear as she did not know when exactly death will knock on her door but was optimistic as she took her drugs as directed and also stayed off foods she was asked to.
Amid her anxiety about the lifeline announcement, the doctor, who gave the prediction according to Abigail, passed a long time even before anybody could realise.
“My condition still could not get better while the swelling also got worse and a man who heard me share my struggle offered to take me to India for treatment which he fulfilled but when we got there, the doctors ordered for me to be brought back to Ghana to continue treatment because they said the condition was such that they could not do anything,” she said.
But 12 years down the line following her diagnosis, she successfully went through a kidney transplant and has lived additional years which she owes all to God.
These low and down moments of Miss Ashley’s life, she indicated, inspired her to write a book behind my smiles, which catalogues her journey, the helpers that came through for her and a lot more worth sharing.
